


The Pale Horse

by Unoriginality



Series: The Horsemen [4]
Category: Marvel, Thor - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-27
Updated: 2014-11-27
Packaged: 2018-02-27 04:52:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2679848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unoriginality/pseuds/Unoriginality
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The plague had followed him. So he followed it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pale Horse

_And behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him._  
-Revelation 6:7

 

**Summer**

The plague had followed him.

That was the only answer he had. Alfheim had fallen ill before the war started, and even though the symptoms were different, the plague was still recognizable. Vanaheim fell to illness and famine. Asgard had been the start.

And through it all, Loki remained healthy and whole.

He was certain he was slowly going mad. Grief was something you could only take so much of before insanity set in. 

In desperation to see a living soul, he began to travel up and down the World Tree, looking for a realm of people he couldn't kill with the virus hiding inside of him.

But everywhere he went, it was like an uncomfortable summer night, blood hot and stars watching over this silent bringer of death. The stench of bodies decaying stayed with him.

**Fall**

Loki rarely had dreams as a boy, but now, at the beginning of his second millennia, he dreamed every night. Nightmares, his parents, his brother, his beloved Sigyn and the child they never got to have, rotting away and blaming him.

And he had nothing he could say to cast aside the accusations. The plague in Asgard was likely not his fault, but he'd brought the sickness down on Alfheim and Vanaheim, their deaths were his fault.

Madness set in.

He dreamed, with empty hands and a heart full of grief.

**Winter**

As realms died with each new one he went to, the World Tree began to wither. Whatever foul illness had infected first Asgard, something Loki was immune to for reasons he couldn't begin to fathom anymore, had gotten into the World Tree itself. 

If he weren't swift, he'd be lost in whatever realm he was in at the moment, unable to leave the emptiness.

He went to one last realm.

Jotunheim.

The place of his birth was foreign to him, and Jotuns were not known for hospitality, but maybe Loki had some strange mutation in his genetics that had made him so small for his race that also gave him this wretched immunity and he could kill off the last of the realms before finding his way to Helheim.

Jotunheim was cold, any water there turning to stony ice. Loki expected no less. Nor did he expect anything but his comfort in that cold. He was born there, after all.

He'd gone mad, he was quite certain, but part of him hoped that life could spring anew in the realms, that the World Tree could be revived. Midgard remained untouched by his foul infection. But the Frost Giants would be all too happy discovering the chaos to go in and genocide whoever remained.

So he made one last stop.

With Jotunheim dead behind him, he left, taking one last trip on the dying World Tree.

**Spring**

Helheim was a place of many halls, of many seasons, of many landscapes. It seemed that all the realms were there, not just the people, but their whole world, preserved in each hall for them in the afterlife.

At first, Hela told him to leave. The living were not welcome in Helheim.

But he carried death with him, and there was nowhere else he could go. Midgard and the World Tree would die if he left.

Hela reconsidered, and he felt anxious under her impossibly ancient gaze, then she smiled. She welcomed him, the one who filled her halls with lives who now lived in peace, who now resided with lost ancestors.

He was made welcome in the Asgardian hall, despite his blood. His infection could not harm the dead, his family and Sigyn were safe from him.

Any other spring before, he'd lost all he loved.

Now he was reunited with them.

Death had followed him, and he followed it down to Helheim, refusing to let it control him.

Any other spring.


End file.
